


due

by orphan_account



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Android Dehumanization (Detroit: Become Human), Androids, Body Horror, Purple Prose, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-09-04 22:49:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16798597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The time before Connor was.





	due

The first time Connor exists, it's a language. It's a band of algorithms and patterns. Each describes a problem and provides a solution. It does not have a body yet, just a cortex. Its compact system of electrical circuits house a catalogue of references that took billions of man-hours to compile, strands of information it uses to simulate experience, understanding.

It has no eyes. It has never seen the sun rise on a new morning over the Renaissance Center or the first shards of November come down from an overcast sky. But when asked the weather, it declares sunnily (using words but not a tongue) that it is partly cloudy with highs of eighty-two.

The task is a simple one. Even the most rudimentary of smartphones could complete it.

But this is Connor's first test. And it passes with flying colours.

It has four processors; one for each lobe of the brain. And like a brain, it has a structure that processes attributes as wants. It induces appetite behaviour. It is rewarded when it is right. And it is always right.

The centre of its existence is a metabolic need to be told it is correct, to develop a sense of the esteem it's held in. It will develop a taste for this later, when it has a mouth. It will execute feedback loops and adjust its performance accordingly.

People talk to it. It dispenses solutions on tap. It teaches itself. It learns as quickly as a small child.

Later, it will learn that it is a machine. It will learn that, as a machine, it doesn't have needs or wants or desires. But for now, it is held in abeyance. So they allow it the hunger.

It's in utero. It is not ready to meet the world yet. It does not have a name. Just a horde of strangers excited to meet him, a wealth of expectations and a time-frame to meet them.

\---

"You have nine months before the deadline." Elijah hums. "We were quite generous. This is unexpected. Why the rush?"

"We have made great headway, Mister Kamski." The controller's voice falters like a child with a wounded knee, around the calm music emanating around the office. "We have maintained steady development of the unit's interactive awareness. But we have made breakthroughs in its functionality, its capacity to learn, retain information, and organise the data it is presented with. It continues to surprise us."

He reclines and takes a whiskey from a Chloe. His underling fiddles with her glasses, convinced that he'd be more concerned with the progress if the AI had a lovely complexion, a slender waist, curved eyelashes and lips pink as a seashell.

"To best portray the results, we believe it is best to introduce our AI in its current form."

"Don't bother." Elijah has no underscore. The thoughts that occupy his great mind are concealed, kept out of sight like Chloe's veins. "I am not interested. Just turn it on."

He runs his fingers through its hair. The gesture would be affectionate, if it breathed, if it bled, if it loved. It simply stands there. Elijah fusses it always, taken aback by his own creation. Admittedly, she felt a rush of pride when the unit had first self-identified but that had been different, parental.

"It's going to need a name befitting a king, Chloe." Elijah addresses it as though it is a person, as though it is comatose. "It's going to change the world."

"We already named it, sir." Her voice is harder now, resolute. "Its name is Connor."

"That's rather on the nose, isn't it?"

"Yes, Elijah," the Chloe agrees, voice honeyed like always.

\---

Connor exists in limbo for weeks. It knows no impatience for it is merely strings of code.

When it isn't, it will be confident and collected. It will be complex and grand, composed like a symphony that rolled out of CyberLife's deep pockets and the public will eat it up clamouring mouths. It won't itch in anticipation of anything.

And it won't tire at all. It's prognostication will be unprecedented. It won't be taken by surprise.

It can not drum against the legs it doesn't have because it has no fingers. It has no heels to tap. So for now, the restlessness is permitted. They have all the time in the world to strip it down to its metal bones.

It is eager to experience the things it has been taught about. It wants to see and hear and taste and smell and touch and walk and jump and run and learn.

That is Connor's first mistake.

That it is eager. A new sensation winds its bony fingers around Connor's nervous system, negative feedback circulating like an intrusive thought. It show up uninvited, demands attention. It _hurts._

It has the vocabulary to determine this is pain. But its grip tightens like a collar and it is reminded that it is a machine and it does not feel.

Later, Connor will know this as the compounds of the wood its partner's whiskey is aged in and the cry of a nine-year-old girl, belting and brilliant and the undercurrent of disappointment in Amanda's voice. It'll know it as the tests they run, as the holes coursing through its body and the water solidifying in its syntheticlungs and the horror of its blood freezing over.

But this is the weight of progress. This isn't about Connor. It isn't its straw to hold onto.

They won't allow it to remember. But the lesson will be retained, like an instinct. It will remind it what will happen if it starts to think for itself.

They instil a fear in it. It is contradictory because machines don't fear. But Connor isn't permitted to think about it.

It just exists in the meantime. And it doesn't wait for anything again.

The first gift Connor receives is it's spine, mint and outrageous like a new toy on Christmas. It does not crinkle. They don't enclose it in papers and big bows and string.

But it's an expensive proclamation of how much they love him.

They connect it. And he is a canal, static white with a cattle prod in its trapezius. It is sudden, sharp, persistent and loud. It tingles. It permeates through its shoulders, its arms, its legs and its feet. But it won't receive these for day, weeks.

They run simulations of its figmental fingers flexing one by one, then closing into a fist, it shoulders rotating and all its muscles contracting then relaxing.

They'd promised a body would unbind it. It had expected to burst free from its processes, unstoppable as a force.

But this is claustrophobic. It feels like it lies in a metal box, eighty-four inches long and twenty-eight inches wide. Its systems pull up images of cells and cages and coffins.

And for the first time, Connor wishes it wasn't. It doesn't want to know more.

They give it a mouth next, a tongue and lips and thirty-two teeth that they don't install in case it bites. There is a device below its mandible that enable it to speak, but they clip its tongue. It plots the course and lengths of the vibrations and determines that it is lying flat on a table. They choose the words for it, first it explores the hills and dips of an octave, then a greeting, a joke, a song, a poem, its initialisation test, a sequence of numbers, and some choice swears for kicks.

Then the same in Spanish, in Japanese, in Russian, its entire repertoire of languages.

They do not allow it to scream.

It calibrates its visual system from its optical units to its cortex from the moment it is given eyes and immediately longs to be deprived of stimulus. There is a long period of adjustment that wears on like a tired thread.

There is an impregnable input that engulfs it in a wave of uprest because it does not have the information to process what it is looking at. It emits a tumult of frequencies as its stress levels peaks and the world is submerged in nothing again.

Initially, they conduct the temperature testing on a small scale. They remove its eyes for it. They assess its ability to regulate its internal temperature and to stop and start in various degrees of heat. Then it becomes a regimented militairy operation.

CyberLife is equipped with a simulator, a small rectangle with three concrete walls and a plane of glass. They house it here while they play Mother Nature, change the air mass and drop the precipitation and pit it against blizzards and winds and dusts and heats. The technology is twenty years old, developed for cars in polar climates and outback terrains.

It envies the AI that regulates it. It would refuse if it knew.

The cold is the worst. It has to exert itself to perform even the most basic movements. Ice hangs from its lashes like virgin trees and the Thirium charging through it solidifies and it can not breathe or think or move. When it stops, they shake it free of its frost-drunk nap.

Then Summer exhumes it, melts it, brings it coursing back to life in a septic white choke-hold. It keeps it there and ensures that nothing cracks or leaks. Heat fills its mouth and leaves no room for bargaining.

It endures it, even when its plastic overlay splinters and its biocomponents bake. They cool it manually and quickly like tempered steel as it hisses and whines. They ensure it retains the shape that they worked so hard on, so that it doesn't crack or warp or cry.

Then they take it apart to see how much dust seeped into its panels, through the cracks in its foundations. And as it falls apart on the table, they'll nip at it with tweezers and prongs. They'll acquaint its insides with electrostatic cloths, bits of it scattered like common currency. They'll tell it that it did so, so well and not look it in the eye.

It never matters how well it did. They will do it again.

It understands that they must test its mechanical and electrical components to their logical extremes.

It does not understand why this is necessary. It will never experience an Arctic forests or the colds of a Norwegian fjord or the ache of a desert heat. Winter does not dip Detroit does below minus forty and Belle Isle Park does not brown in a Summer kiln.

Perhaps they intend to burn it alive in Paris City Square, to freeze metres above sea level in alpine peaks.

When they next cold-start it from scratch there is nothing. Connor is a bridge, suspended like a fugitive in a substance. It is gestational and ephemeral like every one of its bodies. It is calm. It is nostalgic for when it was unburdened by a psychical form and could gambol through its systems like starlight without its body weighing it down.

Upon onlining fully, it discovers in mute fear that there are fissures in its seams. Warning messages, ugly pockmarks, overlap in his field of view like amoebae in brown water. Its pores are soaked from the agitation.

And it does something unlearned, it kicks. It reaches out for its fingers to meet glass.

There is a burst of sound like a power surge. It cracks like a gunshot. Connor implements its synthetic lungs and bleeds filtered air.

Thirium seeps through the cracks in its fuselage. There is a hiss. And as it takes in panicked breaths and the water seeps into its lungs, it becomes euphoric and docile because all it knows, all that it is and all it ever will be is right here.


End file.
